The voice of construction SMEs in Europe

Public procurement: EBC presents concrete examples of award criteria at the Single Market Forum

The European Commission organised a public conference today in Tallinn, as a part of the Single Market Forum, on the use of the right award criteria for the selection of offers in public procurement. The new directives have introduced the most economically advantageous offer, next to the lowest price, as the two criteria to select the offer.

EBC presented best practices and bad concrete examples from its members on the application of these criteria.

Public procurement is estimated at more than 14% of the European Union’s GDP. Public procurement contracts are therefore a huge segment of the available work in the construction sector, where SMEs need to be included.

In February 2014 the European Union adopted the new Public Procurement Directives. The Member States had until April 2016 to enact the new rules in their national law.